


The Us Against The World

by jungkooksfic



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Demons, Angst, Angst and Humor, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blood and Violence, Character Death, Clay | Dream is So Whipped (Video Blogging RPF), Comfort/Angst, Demon Slayer Sabito (Kimetsu no Yaiba), GeorgeNotFound Being an Idiot (Video Blogging RPF), Heavy Angst, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, I promise there will be romance, M/M, Mild Gore, No Smut, POV Third Person, Swearing, gore but not too gory, no beta we die like men, switches perspectives
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-16 21:55:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28838139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jungkooksfic/pseuds/jungkooksfic
Summary: Even in a cruel world, love was still blind and merciless.Dream finds himself on a quest to save a world that had really fucked him over. He also finds himself in the midst of some sadistic, bloody rom-com type romance he definitely didn’t sign up for.
Relationships: Clay | Dream/GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF)
Comments: 21
Kudos: 36





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello-hello!
> 
> This will be a crossover with the anime Demon Slayer! It will be very mildly inspired off of this as I pulled most of the plot out of my ass so don't worry, there will be no anime spoilers here... for the most part.
> 
> Please read the tags before proceeding! There will be descriptions of gore, and death! If either of these things trigger you, please do no proceed. While the descriptions won't be horribly vivid, I'd hate to trigger anyone. 
> 
> I promise this won't be only angst-driven, and I'll incorporate as much humor as possible. This first chapter will be pretty sad but the rest will be way more funny/entertaining. I really hope you guys enjoy!!

**_Dream_ **

_How… how did this happen?_

_How did Dream’s life come to this?_

_Trudging through the snow, the weight of a body on his shoulders and the smell of crimson blood thick in the air?_

_“Hang in there,” he whispers. “Hang in there.”_

_He didn’t know whether he was talking to himself or the person on his back, but either way, it wasn’t affective._

_He couldn’t shake the sense of cold, whether it was from the snow falling into his hair and crunching under his feet, or if it was from the bitter, frigid feeling that had devoured his insides._

_“Hang in there,” Dream says again, for the final time._

_This time, he definitely was saying it to himself._

____________________

Twelve hours felt like decades ago. Lives ago.

A life where where Dream came home, set down his empty basket that he had previously trudged down the snowy mountain with mounds of coal that were now sold, and could sit down at the table with a room full of happy younger siblings and a delicious meal before them.

Dream considered himself to have had a nice life; he grew up in a nice-sized, single-story wooden home at the top of a mountain surrounded by beautiful, tall spruce trees. In the winter, it looked like a snowy wonderland up here with the snow catching in the thick branches of the tree and settling on the roof of their home making it look like a magical winter cottage.

After his father passed away, Dream was the backbone of the household along with his mother and sister. His other siblings were too young to understand that when their father died, that meant he was never coming back.

More often than not, Dream found himself walking down the well-used mountain trail that he could walk down with his eyes closed at this point with a big basket of coal strapped to his back. See, his family’s main source of income was selling coal amongst other things depending on the season.

Yet, once Dream would manage to make it to the village at the base of the mountain, he would find himself roped into all kinds of tasks: helping the farmers market owner paint her living room wall, or lifting a collection of heavy boxes for the sweet old lady at the end of the street. Even though he didn’t live in the village, everyone knew him and welcomed him the instant the stepped foot within the perimeter.

That’s why it wasn’t particularly hard for him to find a place to stay for the night once the sun became too low in the sky for him to make it home before dark as he was always instructed to do.

At first, Dream had foolishly begun to make his way to the path as he figured if he ran a portion of it, he could make it home a half hour quicker, but thankfully, fate stopped him from doing so. And, fate, in this instance, came in the form of an old man he used to call “Uncle John”, but now was just “John.”

“Where are you goin’, kiddo?” John said, voice gravelly and brows raised at Dream, who looked right back at him unwaveringly.

“Home,” Dream answers simply, “I think I can get home with only having to walk in the dark for a half hour, which isn’t so bad.”

“Absolutely not,” John says with a small sigh as he nudges his door open with his food, “you’ll get eaten alive out there. Now come on, I’ll make you some dumplings. You will stay here for the night.”

Dream wasn’t the type to prod, but the curiosity gnawed away at him far too much to not ask John about exactly _what_ would get him eaten alive.

Oh, if only the answer to that question was fiction.

____________________

When Dream arrived home in the earliest light of the next morning, the majority of his family was dead.

The fact is as anticlimactic as that.

But the moment. The moment he discovered it?

He would never forget the feeling of his world shattering around him.

He would never forget how he dropped his empty basket and ran, ran, ran across the thick, falling snow to see the front door wide open and two bodies in front of it.

He couldn’t hear himself calling out to his mother, his father, his sisters as he ran, ran, ran forward and dropped to the ground. He was in denial, in so much denial that he almost didn’t see the blood on the snow, the blood of his family. It was disgusting how beautiful the bright red looked on the white blanket of ground, like rubies scattered all on the snow.

The trail of rubies came from the bodies of his sister, and his twin brothers. They laid limp, lashes unfluttering even as Dream called their names, shook them, cried, screamed.

He would’ve done himself a favor if he left at that moment.

But he didn’t.

He stepped inside, hands covered in his sister’s blood, to see a crime scene.

No, not even that.

He stepped inside his own home to see a _massacre._

There was blood on the walls, on the ceiling, on the floor. He was stepping in it. He was _covered_ in it. He could smell it everywhere, the blood of his sister and his _mom,_ whose body was strewn across the floor of their kitchen. Dream couldn’t even see _how_ she died because he was already sinking to his knees with his hair tugged hard in his hands. He gripped at the blonde strands just to feel the burn of his scalp to make sure he was still _alive_ and this wasn’t hell, but alas, he was still here.

“No,” he says to himself as he couldn’t even _feel_ the tears dripping, but he knew they were there as his throat felt so, so tight, as if life itself had grabbed him by the throat and squeezed. “No, no, no- No!”

When he looked at the bloody heap that must be his mother, all Dream could see were the memories of her and his dad, standing hand-in-hand as they showed the kids to the forest around the house and watched them play. He could still hear her laugh, pleasant and sweet. He could still hear her voice saying _come home before dark!_ and worst of all, an _I love you_ that Dream never got to say to her one last time.

And in a daze, in the absolute state of vibrating panic his mind was in, he was thinking about how if he got home the previous night, he could’ve prevented this, what ever _this_ was. Was it a bear? Someone who broke in and-

No, there was no point in thinking about it. But Dream couldn’t stop. He held his head in shaking, bloody hands.

And when he looked down, all he could see and smell and taste was blood.

All he could feel was the blood on his hands.

Their blood was on his hands.

____________________

It took a few more moments of screaming and crying for his survival instincts to kick in.

He checked each body for a pulse, and had little success.

But Drista, she was still alive. She was still warm, even.

He couldn’t tell where she was bleeding from, but he had no time to check. All he could do was lift her onto his back, and pad his way through the snow on the mountain path he usually looked forward to walking down. When they were kids, Drista used to bed Dream to let her come with him down the mountain, but every time, once they hit the halfway mark, he had to carry her because she would become so exhausted.

He pretended this was one of those times.

“Drista, hang in there,” Dream says, but his voice was hoarse and broken. “Hang in there, for me!”

So, how did this happen? How did Dream find himself carrying his near-dead sister through the foot of snow he had to trudge through, leaving dripping blood as their trail?

Dream was still trying to gather the pieces, and he had become so lost in his own mind that he wasn’t watching his footing, and in an instant, he took a wrong step on the side of the trail that resulted in tumbling and falling down a length of the mountain before he landed flat on his back in a blanket of fluffy white snow. He took a few moments to stare at the sky, dumbfounded, as if there had been no snow, he surely would have died.

He would’ve laughed at himself if this were any other day, laughed at his own stupidity because he had one job and one job only. Protect Drista.

He sat up in an instant and ignored the snow that was slipping into the hood of his cloak.

“Drista!” he cries, rising to his feet and running about in an instant. “Drista!”

She was nowhere to be found.

Until he turned around.

She was _standing_ there.

Dream couldn’t process that. All he could process was that his sister was here, she was safe, and somehow, she was on her feet.

“Drista, hey,” he said, voice softer and coaxing. “You don’t have to walk! I’ll carry you, okay? We’re almost to town, we can get you to the doctor, and-”

He wouldn’t be able to recall the next split second if he tried. One moment, Drista was standing there, head down and long, dirty blonde hair handing as a shield in her face. The very next, she was on top of Dream, clawing and snarling at him with a dangerous look in her bloodshot eyes.

Her teeth were bared but they were inhumanly sharp and her nails were long, and clawed. Dream cried out and in an instant, he shielded his face with the handle of an axe he carried at his side at all times.

“Drista?” he said in a sad, broken voice as he watched himself fend off his own sister who had turned into something close to a rabid animal. She was biting down on the axe handle and still groping and reaching for him. “Drista, what-”

She only snarled in reply.

How could this happen?

How could it be that Dream’s entire family was murdered, and he was about to be killed by the only family he had left? The sister he had carried down the face of a mountain?

If he squinted, he could see a roof a small ways off buried in the trees, the roof of Uncle John’s house that was just a little ways from the village.

“Help!” Dream screams, “please, anyone! Help me!”

When Dream cried out for help, he honestly didn’t expect anyone to come. Because no one came to save his family, and no one came to help him carry his near-dead sister down the mountain. He was convinced that he was alone in this world.

But life threw him a bone. Fate gave him a break.

There stood someone, and Dream was temporarily blinded of their face because the sun was right behind their head, making a glowing ring around them like a halo.

“Here!” the voice said in panic, and Dream noticed how it was a foreign accent, something that wasn’t from around here. The voice was soothing, almost soothing enough to calm Dream’s racing heart a little.

And, the figure came forward, dropped the basket he had been holding, and wrapped his arms tight around Drista’s middle, enough that Dream could wriggle out from under her.

Only once he rose to his feet and stumbled back to see his sister wiggling and snarling and clawing at this stranger, he saw who this was.

It was a boy, just a boy, somewhere near his age. He had dark hair and dark eyes and pale skin, and he was… cute. Pretty, even. But in this moment, he was an angel to Dream. He saved his life.

Dream felt frozen in time as he watched the boy attempt to restrain his rabid sister, and as ironic as it was, he felt lucky to have at least had this moment. Even though they were both kids, children trying to survive in this cruel world, Dream swore that if he had just a moment longer to look at this boy, maybe he could begin to fall in love with him. And he’d never had the chance to fall in love with anybody as all he had time for was his family and selling coal.

But in this moment, all there was was Dream, and this boy he didn’t know the name of. He tried to gather as many things as he could from that single split second as for all he knew, he could die in the next second. He learned that the boy’s hair fluttered when there was a breeze and that his dark eyes glowed gold in the sunlight.

The moment ended, and they both knew it, for as soon as the boy locked eyes with Dream, it shattered. Reality sunk its claws into Dream’s skin relentlessly and he was back on his feet and attempting to restrain his own sister.

She whirled on them, head turning to see the stranger attempting to calm her. Her eyes blew open wide and in an instant, she had turned around in their arms and reached out a foot to kick the guy square in the stomach. Dream didn’t know what he had been suspecting from that action, but it certainly hadn’t been in the inhuman strength to come with it.

The boy flew, frankly, the force of the kick sending him right into a tree, a blow he received with his back. And, maybe he would’ve cracked a rib at the most if he hadn’t hit the back of his head on the tree bark, for as soon as his head got hit, his heavy lashes fluttered and a single stream of blood escaped his nose before he fell to his knees and flopped face-first into the snow. He looked like a ragged doll, disposed of and forgotten in the snow.

Dream cried out in a voice he didn’t recognize as his own as he kept his fighting sister tucked under one arm and dropped to the ground beside the boy. When Dream looked down at him, he looked peaceful aside from the stream of blood trickling from his nose and the sides of his mouth. His lashes were heavy and closed and anyone fooled could think he was only sleeping. And if Dream leaned in enough, he could see the small, very missable and faded freckles along the bridge of his nose. He didn’t know why, but he had the underlying instinct to protect him with his life.

“Hey,” Dream says, scooping the boy up with his free arm and laying his head across his lap. “Hey, stay with me,” he says a little desperately. In the indent where the boy’s face had been before, there was a little mark of red as a reminder that he was injured.

The boy didn’t reply, but he shivered and nuzzled his face deeper into Dream’s lap in a way that would be endearing if he wasn’t seriously injured. But it was a good sign because shivering meant he was still alive, and if he was still alive, there was hope.

So, Dream just sat in the snow, stranger’s head in his lap and his sister tucked tight under his arm, watching as the snow fell heavier with the passing moments. He stayed still and watched as the trees seemed to grow taller and taller around him, like a maze, almost taunting as he felt so small and so _helpless_ in that moment.

“Kid?”

There was a new voice. A new presence that Dream could feel before he even looked up.

“What are you doing?”

The voice was flat, and unforgiving, and their form was just like so. He had long, pink, billowing hair that was secured in a loose and low ponytail with escaping strands that fluttered in the wind. He was tall, boots hugging his calves with a dagger strapped to his thigh and cloak long and flapping that it looked like a cape. This man looked as if he had been pulled out of a storybook, or an illustration of a mighty hero wielding a might sword.

Dream looked at him from where he kneeled in the ground. He tried to speak, but his voice only croaked. He realized that this mystery man was faceless; he adorned a clay mask tied to his face with a thick black ribbon and a protruding snout that must be a design of a pig. The mask would make anyone else look ridiculous, but somehow, this man made it look fierce. Dream’s hands trembled from where he held his sister and his throat felt as if it had been sealed shut with the brutal, icy wind.

As the man approached him, he tried his best to hold his gaze, but not with dignity. He didn’t have any of that left.

Out of fear, and out of a silent cry for help.

Instead of offering a hand, a gloved hand with fingers adorned with golden rings, he heard the sound of a sword being unsheathed from a sword.

“Step away from the demon, kid,” the man said. “And I suggest you look away, too.”

There was a moment of confusion before his face flattened in shock once he realized that the man’s sword was pointed at his sister.

His sister was a _demon?_

No, but that couldn’t be right. She was born human, she helped Dream raise their siblings after their dad was gone. She didn’t hurt anyone, ever.

And more importantly, demons weren’t _real._

Right?

“I said step away from the demon,” the man replies, voice slow and clearly irritated. Dream could feel the sword tap against his shoulder, and his sister wakes from her previously dormant state to snarl and struggle against him.

But Dream looks up into the mask of this mystery hero, and focuses on where he figured the eyes would be.

“No,” he says, unyielding, “I won’t.”

The man visibly sighs as he stares at the boy for a moment before saying, “suit yourself.”

And the fate his sealed.


	2. Chapter 2

**_Technoblade_ **

Being a demon slayer was a hard enough job as is.

Techno learned from an early age— too early— that this profession meant sacrifice of the individual. It meant that all morality must be compromised into survival instinct standards.

Things, useless things like love and attachment and mourning must be disposed of because these made the weak points in people. Being in love was a death sentence in this world.

In other words, to be an idea demon slayer, all human attributes of the individual must be destroyed.

That said, Techno had a hard enough job. He’d seen the ends of the earth, he’d seen just about every kind of demon and in addition killed them, but he’d never, _ever_ seen anything as atrocious as this.

Techno had been trained like a dog in the sense that he could hear inhumanly well. If someone screamed, or if there was the characteristic demon growl, he could _sense_ it from quite the ways away.

So, when he had been on his way up the snowy mountain for his latest mission, which was to clear out the demons in a deserted village to make room for people who have lost their homes from recent disasters, he was stopped by the clear sound of commotion. With a small sigh, he embarks on this surprise mission and tries his best to keep his eyes open.

In the demon slayer life, exhaustion is the new alert. Sleep was rare and dangerous in this world.

It only took a minute or two for Techno to reach the area where he heard the anguished screaming from, yet once he was faced with the scene he was, he had to blink twice to see if he was hallucinating.

But he specifically remembered a voice saying _help! Please, anyone! Help me!_ and he fully expected to see a young boy in the midst of a stray demon. It was a cloudy day after all, which meant that some demons were bold enough to venture into the day without fear of being disintegrated by the sun.

He hadn’t expected this.

A boy, just a boy, clutching a girl to his side and a boy laid over his lap. The girl seemed rabid, teeth bared and nails long. Her dress was bloody but there was no wound as she must’ve already healed, and she was snarling and spitting against the grasp of the boy. The boy on his lap had a trail of blood from his nose that was starting to leak from his mouth.

At first, Techno figured this was the boy’s attempt to protect both himself and the boy from this demon.

But then he took a closer look.

It was almost as if he was barely hanging on, just trying to keep them altogether.

Then they met eyes.

Techno saw the pure, raw fear in the boy’s eyes. His eyes glistened with tears of anger and frustration on a face that had clearly seen terrible pain. His hands were bloodstained with blood that wasn’t his, and he was shaking, but not only from the cold. Techno lowered his sword a little with an emotion he wasn’t used to: sympathy. Heavy, awful sympathy.

But the world was cruel. He remembered that as the snow fluttered down over them and settled in the boy’s long, messy blonde hair and his lashes dewy with tears. The snow would’ve been beautiful, but it felt like the universe pointing its finger in their faces and laughing.

“Step away from the demon, kid,” Techno’s gruff voice came, breaking the delicate violence of the air. He watched in pure curiosity as he saw the look of utter shock and denial cross the boy’s face. Tears skimmed down freckle cheeks as his world caved in on him. He looked from Techno, to the girl, back to Techno. His head shook slightly as any attempts to speak drowned out in his voice ruined from screaming and sobbing. “And I suggest you look away, too,” Techno adds, voice just a touch softer than before.

Because it felt like just yesterday that he had been in the same position as this boy clutching onto a shattered reality.

There was no response.

More tears gathered and fell, and the boy looked so focused that Techno figured he didn’t even realize he was crying.

Techno unsheathes his other sword, the loud sound of the swift _shing!_ forcing the boy’s attention once more. He hated the look of fear in his eyes.

“I said step away from the demon,” he repeats, less forgiving this time. He dares a step closer, and the sound of snow crunching under his feet made the boy flinch.

But somehow, the boy dared to meet his eyes. The boy, with tear-filled, bright green eyes, locked eyes with Techno. Even with his mask on, Techno could feel the sharpness of the boys eyes through it.

“No,” he says, and though his voice was shaking uncontrollably, he sounded strong. “I won’t.”

Techno tried to catch a glimpse of this boy’s thought process as he had a shivering, injured boy in his lap and a rabid sister under his arm, yet he was refusing help. Techno had to remind himself that it wasn’t any of his business. He wasn’t trained to care, he was trained to kill. “Suit yourself.”

And in an instant, the boy’s sniveling and sniffling halted along with his flowing tears. His face settled in an iron resolve and as defenseless as the boy was, Techno felt a quiver of fear instill in him.

In an instant, Techno was on him, foot nudging in the space between the demon’s back at the boy, forcing the boy laying on his lap to fall forgotten onto the snow along with the blonde, yet once the girl was release, she was pouncing on Techno in a way that unleashed his instincts to slit her throat.

But in the second that he raised his sword to do so, he felt a force stop him.

It was small and light, but enough to ruin his balance to drop the girl and make him stumble back.

He looked down to see the boy, the one with blood trickling from his nose and the corners of his mouth, yet here he was, saving this girl’s life.

Who were these kids?

Techno looked down in sheer shock and minor irritation to see a steely resolve in this boy’s brown eyes that were focusing in and out. He clearly had a concussion of sorts as his lashes fluttered and his entire form was quivering to keep himself upright.

“Just give in,” Techno hisses as he pushes the kid off of him to see that he gave no fight, and fell right back into the snow with a sad, bloody cough.

But the instant he pushed that boy off, the girl was on him again, eyes blown wide and fanged teeth bared as she pounced on him once again.

Techno realized something in that moment.

Her eyes were bright and green and filled with a very, very familiar determination. Her cheeks were coated in freckles and had a light blush on them from the cold.

This girl…

Was she the boy’s sister?

It all clicked.

Techno had to do something before this boy killed himself trying to save someone who didn’t exist.

In an instant, his sword hung in his hand unused as he held the girl by the scruff of her neck, just above the ground so the tips of her toes barely skimmed it and her hands blindly flailed out.

“Listen, kid,” Techno says, sword raising to rest on the girl’s throat. The boy looked up at him from where he was kneeling in the snow, eyes wide. That entire sequence couldn’t have been more than five seconds. “I know you think this _thing_ is your sister, but it’s not. That’s just that. I commend your attempt to get between me and my job, but it’s my duty to kill demons. Your sister is gone.”

The boy shook his head. He looked manic. “No, no. You don’t understand. She’s still in there, she’s still-”

“Give up!” Techno roars. “I don’t care if you think I’m evil because one day, you’ll realize that I’m doing you a favor.” His sword edges dangerously closer to the girls neck, and the boy wails out.

“Please!” he screams, “she’s all I have left! I’m- I’m her big brother!” And there were those tears again, gathering and falling. His previous determination had evaporated. “I have to protect her! Even- even from you!”

Techno’s gaze went dark. He couldn’t afford to sympathize with the lost. “Then you have nothing left,” he says in a low voice, and he looked away from the boy as he couldn’t bare to see the look in his eyes when what used to be his sister was assassinated before his eyes. He didn’t want to see the boy’s face when his sister’s blood was on his hands and all over the snow.

That had been a mistake, looking away.

Just as he was about to finish the job, a wavering battle cry forced his attention.

There was the boy, charging him head-on, body bent to the side to hold the hatchet he must’ve had with him but eyes boring into his.

Charging right at him with nothing but a measly axe and no armor? Techno had to scoff. What a weak attempt.

All he had to do was hit the boy square in the back with the butt of his sword for him to let out a strangled croak and fall to the ground beside his passed-out friend.

Techno felt no sense of pride at the scene he created as he turned back to this demon he was holding on to.

But something else happened.

There was a sound of something whirring through the air.

Techno didn’t even realize what it was until the axe split the tree right next to his head with a precision that he could feel the wind of. A chill ran down his spine as he tried to even process what had happened.

When the boy had run at him, he must’ve thrown the hatchet in the air just before charging as a distraction. And his body- he had twisted it to seem as though he was holding the axe when really, he wasn’t.

This was the boy’s final attempt to protect the girl because he knew he couldn’t win. He knew Techno had him outmatched to the extreme.

Before Techno could just do his damn job, the demon slipped right out of his hand in his moment of shock.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Techno hisses as he was _angry_ now. He didn’t care about morality. This demon was going down.

He fully anticipated for the demon to lunge at him, to drag its blood-stained claws into his flesh and snarl.

The moment never came.

Instead, Techno looked ahead of him to see the demon charging straight for the fallen blonde, and he whirled forward to stop the thing from devouring him alive-

The demon turned around, back to the boy, and stared Techno straight in the eyes.

Okay, this was just _weird._

The demon hadn’t devoured the boy.

It was protecting him… from Techno.

Techno was momentarily stunned as a crushing realization hit him:

 _No, you don’t understand,_ the boy had cried, _she’s still in there._

Techno met the demon’s- no, the _girl’s_ eyes and saw they were bright green. Not red, like an average demon’s.

She was protecting her brother.

Maybe Technoblade really didn’t understand after all.

He lowered his sword, threw back his head, and laughed.

Sometimes it was funny when the universe took a shit on the information you thought you could count on.

____________________

It took a minute or two for the blonde boy to wake again.

Techno had spent the time leaned against the trunk of a tree, still with the indent of the axe that the boy had thrown at him not long ago.

Once he heard the rustlings of snow to indicate the boy was awake, he looked up from where he was sharpening his sword.

“Took you long enough,” Techno says gruffly. In an instant, the boy’s eyes scanned around, panicked before they settled on his sister and in an instant, he scuttled along the snow and scooped her into his arms protectively.

“You… didn’t kill her?”

Techno heaves a sigh. He hated saying this, but it was necessary. “You were right,” he admits. “Your sister is a demon, but… there’s something off about her. Something in your favor.” The boy’s entire face lights up. “The instant she kills someone, I’ll see to it that she’s killed, too.” The boy’s smile fades a bit, “but if what you say is true, that she’s still in there, that shouldn’t be an issue.”

“She is still in there,” the boy says, determined. He holds his sister a little closer to him. Protectively. There was something sadly endearing about it.

“Then protect her.” Techno throws something before the boy that landed in the snow in front of him: a mask. A smooth, oval, clay mask with a black ribbon on the back. The mask was white and blank aside from a wide smiley-face on the front of it. The boy picks it up and stares at it in wonder. “Protect her and protect yourself.”

The boy turns the mask over in his hands before he looks to Technoblade in wonder. “What’s this for?”

“Emotions are your weakness,” Techno says. He recalls the looks of pure fear and sadness and anger that flashed across the boy’s face at times. “So don’t let anyone see them.”

In an instant, the boy slipped the mask on, and his face was hidden. Those bright, ambitious eyes shielded from the world. The mask was a little big on him, but Techno knew he’d grow into it.

From where the mask cut off just above his cupid’s bow, he could see the smile growing on the boy’s face.

In that moment, his sister slowly drifted awake, yet she didn’t lunge forward and attack her brother, or even launch onto Techno once again. Instead, she rose to her feet, and stood behind her brother. She had a little strip of bamboo over her mouth, tied with a ribbon. Techno figured it would help her resist the urge to attack people, sinking her teeth into a bamboo strip.

“You can walk up that mountain to a house that is at its peak,” Techno orders as he turns his back from them to sheath his swords. His work here was done. “I’ll meet you up there.”

“Wait, does that mean…”

“That I’ll train you? Yes.”

Techno didn’t have to turn around to tell the boy was dripping with excitement. But how could Techno have done anything else? The boy had crazy potential, and a crazy half-demon sister. Passing up this opportunity would be a crime.

(It definitely wasn’t because Techno wanted to take some orphans under his wing. Definitely not.)

“I’m not going to escort you there, though,” he goes on, “I have shit to do.”

“Okay,” the boy says cheerfully. Techno frowns a little. He wondered how long that cheeriness would stay with him.

Techno was about to be on his merry way when he realized there was one last thing to worry about: the other boy, laying on the snow.

Techno actually groaned. Great. He’d sentenced himself to dealing with children and now he had to carry the boy down the mountain? Spectacular. He hated his job sometimes.

As he lifted the boy into his arms and felt him shift a little, he looked into his face to find it to be incredibly familiar.

“George?” he murmurs to himself. The boy stirs.

“George?” the blonde boy repeats in curiosity. At the way he said it, Techno figured the boy’s eyes practically sparkled as he said his name. “Is- is that his name?”

“It is,” Techno confirms as he looks down at his resting face and very carefully wipes the trickling blood from his nose and mouth. “He’s… my colleague’s trainee.”

“He’s training to be a demon slayer, too?”

Techno hums in confirmation as he looks down at the boy in wonder. George had been training with Phil for about three months now, enough for him to know how to properly wield a sword and identify the different scents of demons.

There was no doubt that he knew he was helping his boy protect a demon.

So why did he do it?

Techno’s face fell a little.

It was probably at fault of the dripping kindness in George’s heart. He feared for his future, the future of a boy who could sympathize with murderers.

“Well, you go up to the house. I’ll find somewhere to put him.”

“Wait!” the blonde cries, taking a step forward. He stutters a little as he says, “I- I’ll take him with me!”

“Huh?” Techno says back. His brows were raising, but he figured the boy could sense the heavy sarcasm in his voice at the way he falters slightly.

“I can- I’ll carry him,” the boy offers plainly. “You’re already busy, right?”

“I am,” Techno says slowly.

“I know how to treat concussions. Kind of.”

Technoblade wasn’t about to pass of the opportunity of getting rid of the responsibility of a child, so gladly, he loaded George onto the boy’s back. Even in his unconsciousness, George seemed to cling to the boy tightly and rest his head forward onto the boy’s neck.

Techno was about to turn around and leave the boy on his expedition before he heard a “wait!” behind him, to which he turned around with a highly pained expression.

But the boy just leapt forward and hugged him.

Techno frankly hated human attachment and touch, but this… felt a little different.

“Thank you,” the boy said plainly, and he looked up at Techno. Even though Techno couldn’t see through the clay mask he’d given to him, he knew his eyes must be somewhat tear-filled with gratitude. “Thank you for everything.”

Technoblade decided to set aside the fact he almost murdered this kid’s sister as he said, “no problem, kiddo.”

Then came the almost comedic _thump_ sound behind the kid, and he whirled around to see that in hugging Techno, he’d lost his grip on George, who now was laying face-first in the snow.

“Ack!” The kid pads away from Techno to lift up George and attempt to hoist George onto his back once again, “George, I’m so sorry,” he says, even though the boy was clearly unresponsive. But maybe he was, because George was gripping onto him from where his arms dangled loosely over his shoulders.

As they finally were about to part ways, Technoblade found himself being the one to stop the kid this time.

“Wait,” he calls out to him. The kid whirls around, still looking bright even with an entire body weighing him down on his back, and his sister gripping to hold onto his arm. “What’s… what’s your name?”

“Clay,” the kid calls back, “but you can call me Dream.”

Something told him that he’d grow to hear that name over and over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what is it with techno and orphans lmao


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dream trains to slay demons.  
> (Alternate chapter title: Dream misses George.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is still getting to the action, just filling in the gaps.
> 
> Next chapter will be pretty action-packed, I promise!

**_Dream_ **

Dream would be soon to discover that summiting a mountain with a near-stranger on his back and a half-demon sister under his arm would be the easiest task he would complete in the next four years.

As Technoblade had explained, there was a small log house on the very tip-top of the mountain, surrounded by trees and beautiful purple flowers with a calming scent that he would soon recognize as wisteria, a flower that demons hated so much that they were unable to live in regions overridden with it.

“Where am I?” That had been the first thing to leave George’s mouth once he woke up from his unconsciousness. According to Technoblade, who ended up returning a few hours after Dream wandered into the house, George had acquired quite the nasty concussion, which lead him to question Drista’s power, who had inflicted this injury with a single, swift kick to the gut.

“You’re safe,” Dream had replied. After putting Drista to sleep, he’d stayed by George’s bedside with a book in his hands.

He remembered looking up from his book to see how the dim candlelight flickered off of the other boy’s face, making his pale skin glow gold, and his brown eyes fill with the light.

“Oh,” the boy whispers, eyelids drooping, “okay.”

It was so easy to forget how young they both were in that moment— no older than fourteen, and already having suffered great loses most go lifetimes without knowing. All they could do was bask in each other’s company for comfort.

Dream didn’t quite know that yet, though. All he knew was that he was safe, and George was safe, and Drista was fast asleep in the other room with Techno making dinner. Despite always having something to grumble about, Dream discovered that Techno was really quite kind.

“What’s your name?” George asks in a slurred, exhausted voice. He stubbornly kept his eyes opened, so Dream does the same.

“Dream,” he replies steadily.

“That’s a really cool name,” George admits as he props himself upright with a few near pillows. Dream found himself to be nearly on the edge of his own seat to hear what George had to say to him. “I can’t remember what your face looks like, though. Did Technoblade give you that mask?”

“He did,” Dream responds. He feels a yawn come up his throat. “Pretty cool, huh?”

George nods in affirmation. “Will I ever see what your real face looks like?” The poor boy must’ve been delirious from just waking after days of restless sleep as his stream of conscious just tumbled off his lips. But Dream didn’t mind at all.

“Maybe,” he replies honestly.

He found that George’s voice soothed him so greatly he felt his own eyelids begging to close. Dream felt as if his eyes remained open and vigilant even when his body ached with exhaustion as every attempt to sleep resulted in horrible nightmares. Nightmares smeared in his mother’s blood and her anguished, final screams he never even got to hear. But he didn’t need to, because his imagination tortured him with them.

No matter how much he tried to fight it, Dream fell asleep that night, to the sound of George’s voice, telling a story about one of his training days where his task was to catch three salmon with his bare hands. George promised him that it was a very funny story, but Dream fell asleep before the punchline.

Sleep wasn’t kind to him that night, it took no mercy to shake him with screams and cries of _where were you, Dream? Where were you?_

 _I tried to save you,_ Dream would scream back, _I tried!_

He didn’t realize he’d said this aloud until he woke to George shaking him awake.

“Dream?” his voice came through the dark.

“I tried, I tried,” Dream sobbed. Oh, he was crying? He didn’t remember doing that. “George, I tried to save them, I did-”

He felt hands on his shoulders, drifting up to rest on either side of his mask where his cheeks would be. Dream’s body was quivering uncontrollably, his breaths sharp and staggered, his words jumbled in his throat and coming out as thick, sad sobs. “George, I-” He wasn’t controlling the words. They came out as they pleased.

“Shh,” George soothes, and he must’ve shuffled to the edge of the bed to sit beside the chair Dream had fallen asleep in, because all of a sudden, Dream felt his face being smothered into his shirt. Dream sniffles into the fabric. For someone who always sought to protect his siblings and hold them tight when they cried, it was nice to be held. To cry, and not feel bad about it.

“It was just a dream,” George murmurs into his hair. “It wasn’t real. You’re here, remember? You’re safe.”

“I am?” Dream says, voice weak and breaking. Any other time, he’d kick himself for sounding so pathetic, so needy. But just this once, he gave himself a break.

“You are,” George confirms. His voice was smooth, patient, forgiving.

Each time Dream hiccuped on his tears, George would hold him closer, tighter until Dream didn’t cry anymore. The tears stopped, but George didn’t let go. Instead, he silently made room on the bed beside him, and they fell asleep like that: Dream clinging onto the other, and George with his head resting on his hair.

Dream didn’t have a nightmare again, even after George left with a man with overgrown blonde hair and a wide smile, never to return again. They both lead busy lives, too busy fulfilling futures of demon slayers to cross the mountains to see each other.

One night, Dream’s night drifted into nightmare territory, but all he could hear in his head was George’s voice saying _you’re here, remember? You’re safe._

____________________

Dream’s life went uphill from there.

He couldn’t decide what was worse: the fact that training sessions with Technoblade either resulted in collapse, vomit, or sometimes both, or the fact that his sister was asleep for the entire duration of it.

Thanks to Techno’s house being situated on the top of a mountain, that led for plenty of opportunity to run up and down the forest that surrounded it. Despite being a scrawny, pencil-thin teenage boy, he was given no mercy.

 _“What?”_ Techno had said to him one day, words muddled as he was in the midst of eating a piece of bread he balanced in one hand, while in the other he held a sharpened sword. _“You expect me to go easy on you? I already am going easy on you, kiddo.”_

 _“I might be harsh,”_ Techno had said another day as Dream dangled by his leg from a tree. See, the wonderful thing about his morning jogs was they were riddled with traps set by Technoblade to keep him on his toes at all times. He’d been dropped into sword-filled pits, flung up into trees, and in this case, dangled by his leg from a too-thin rope for his comfort. He could feel the blood rushing to his head as he stared at his mentor from upside-down, his mask threatening to slip from his face from the amount of sweat gathering on the back of his neck and his scalp. _“But the world is harsher.”_

Lucky for the world, Dream didn’t know when to back down.

Even when he spent training days exclusively practicing the motion of swinging a sword, and even as he counted _two hundred nighty-nine, three hundred!_ Technoblade would look at him, brows raised, mask shielding what must be an unimpressed expression, as he would monotonously say, _“again.”_

Dream swung that stupid sword until his palms were bursting with blisters that would callus after years of this grueling routine.

But Drista didn’t wake. For some reason, Dream was under the allusion that if he worked hard enough, if he sweat hard enough, if he _cried_ hard enough, she would wake. But she didn’t. Each day, he would open the sliding door to the room she had been set in, only to find her eyes closed, blonde hair in a pool around her head, chest rising slowly and falling with each breath.

Dream decided to keep a journal for her.

Each night, even as his eyes were sliding closed and his hands were so blistered it physically hurt to hold a quill, he dipped the feather into ink, and scratched his daily learnings down for her.

In the beginning, the notes were quite pleasant.

_Dear Drista,_

_I miss you, but I hope you know I’m doing this all for you._

Being the teenage boy he was, Dream didn’t learn the intricacies of poetry, or nice penmanship. But after four years of writing these notes, he grew in these abilities.

However, the notes became more and more bitter.

_Dear Drista,_

_Is it rude for me to wish Technoblade would fly up into one of those traps and I could be the one to munch bread in his face?_

Yet, his most out-of-character note was the one that simply read,

_Dear Drista,_

_I miss George._

And as Dream scratched down the date at the end of that note, he realized it had been two years since the day when he was laying helpless in the snow, and a foreign, sweet voice said _here!_

George was as good as a stranger, but somehow, he felt like so much more than that. Dream felt in from the way George woke up from his concussion and they stayed up late together just talking, or how George coaxed Dream through his nightmares so well he hadn’t had a single nightmare even two years after.

It was arguable that Dream only missed the _idea_ of George, but he doubted it.

He missed the possibility of getting to know him better, but something told him he would surely see him again.

(This was really all that was keeping Dream from throwing a rock in Technoblade’s face as he was tasked with pushing a boulder up the mountain.)

____________________

Two more years passed quicker than they should’ve. Dream didn’t drop his habit of writing letters, because they were the only real way to differentiate the passing days. He also didn’t drop the habit of missing George.

One day, he’d actually asked Technoblade of his whereabouts.

 _“George?”_ Techno asks incredulously, _“ahah. Yeah, no. You won’t be seeing him any time soon.”_

 _‘Why?”_ Dream had asked more vulnerably than he would’ve liked.

 _“You’ll see,”_ Technoblade had answered. Just like that, he pointed upward in a way Dream new meant it was time to jog up and down the mountain, and complete his three hundred sword swings.

But it wasn’t until he hit four years and one month that Technoblade looked at him and simply said, “I have nothing more to teach you.”

This did not mean Techno was satisfied with Dream’s current abilities by any means. At first, Dream had felt a swell of pride in his chest which promptly died the instant Techno lead him through the eery forest that always seemed to have fog lingering above the dirt to show a wide clearing in the trees where dead in the center sat a wide, circular boulder.

It was huge. Just shy of being Dream’s height (the guy was a few months past eighteen and a practical giant: that was an accomplishment for the rock to be nearly his height) and just as long as the horses Dream would ride when he ventured to town with Technoblade.

In confusion, Dream looked from the menacing boulder over to his mentor.

“Break that boulder,” Techno says simply, “and you’ll be ready for your Final Selection exam.”

At first, Dream had laughed.

But after two months of trying, he stopped thinking it was funny.

He continued with his training routines on his own. Run down the mountain, run up the mountain, dodge the traps, practice his sword swings, repeat.

He’d start when the run rose and end when the sun set, but each day when he stopped by the boulder and hit it with his sword, he realized he was closer to breaking his sword than the boulder itself.

He tried not to get frustrated. He tried to practice patience.

Dream felt like he was going crazy, going about the same routine over and over expecting different results. He was going so crazy that he even _missed_ the old training with all the hoarse yelling from his pink-haired demon slayer mentor and the permanent feeling of sweat dripping down his neck and his shallow breaths being the only sounds to accompany him.

He had tried everything. He had tried banging his sword against the rock, batting at it with tree branches, even swinging from the trees to gather momentum like fucking _Tarzan._

It was all to no avail. The boulder stood, without a crack, pristine, smooth surface taunting him.

“You’re never going to break that boulder, you know,” came a voice behind him one day. Dream nearly leapt out of his own skin as usually, he could hear feet crunching along the dirt for a good few seconds to warn him of someone’s presence. Yet, as he whirled around, he noticed not one, but two figures perched on the boulder. It was as if they appeared out of thin air, summoned from Dream’s scattered mind.

The first was a boy, just around his age, legs dangling from the boulder and arm rested against it. His eyes looked fierce from behind his curtain of curly, unruly hair.

“Who- who are you?” Dream inquires, sword drawn to serve as protection in front of him.

“More like who are _you,”_ the boy inquires. He had an accent like George’s. “What, did you really think that banging your sword against the rock will do the trick? Might as well take a piss on it and hope for the best.”

Dream felt his grip tighten on his sword, but before he could speak, the figure beside this mystery guy spoke up.

“Wilbur, don’t be so rude,” the girl interjects. Her voice was sweet, and she looked sweet, too, with blonde hair loose in a ponytail. The boy- or, Wilbur- looked at her, heaved a small sigh, and looked back to Dream with newfound patience.

“Who are you do judge, anyway? _Wilbur,”_ Dream shoots back.

“Because I’ve already sliced this boulder.”

Dream would’ve huffed at the obvious lie, except he took that moment to notice a flat, disk-like mask held in his hands, identical to his own with a smiley-face on the front and strands of black ribbon dangling from either side.

“How? By pissing on it and hoping for the best?” Dream quips at him. Wilbur laughs, breathy and unapologetic enough to draw a small smile from the girl beside him.

“I like you,” Wilbur admits, “but you’re being stupid.”

Dream almost imitated the way Wilbur said the word ‘stupid’ as it sounded more like _shtew-pid,_ just like George said it.

So Dream did what Technoblade had arguably taught him the best.

Swallow his pride, and listen.

“How can I… not be stupid?”

Wilbur offered him a wide, toothy grin.

“I thought you’d never ask.”

____________________

In some ways, Wilbur was more cruel than Technoblade.

See, the thing about Wilbur was that he was a really good swordsman. Like, _really_ good. But the worst part about it was whenever they would duel, Wilbur would dodge his attacks with sing-songs of _too fast!_ or _too slow!_ or, Dream’s least favorite reply of all, _I could do this in myself, you green-cloaked motherfucker._

Actually, the worst part about these duels was the fact that Wilbur only was weaponed with a simple wooden sword while Dream had a perfectly proper one, yet he ended up getting his ass handed to him time after time.

Between these terrible sessions with Wilbur, Niki, the kind, blonde girl who had a knack for calming Wilbur down, helped him out. She’d gently correct his techniques and strategies in ways that would have him coming to these fights stronger and stronger.

 _“Why are you helping me?”_ Dream had asked one day. Niki had given him an odd look mixed with surprise and something else akin to sadness that he couldn’t quite put a label on.

 _“Because I want you to do what I couldn’t,”_ Niki had replied simply with a soft smile, _“and that’s what Wilbur wants, too. We want you to succeed.”_

It sounded ominous then, but on the dawn of a new day, he’d realize what she meant.

The day he finally cracked the boulder was the day before his nineteenth birthday.

It was on the day he was dueling with Wilbur, who this time, wore a matching clay mask and bore a proper sword this time.

Despite the adrenaline buzzing through his veins and the chill from the fog settling around him, Dream tightened the ribbon securing his mask, and unsheathed his sword.

For the first time in their months of fights, Dream’s blade reached Wilbur first. If there was anything he’d learned from fighting Wilbur, it was that whoever was quicker had the advantage as each time, Wilbur would take his wooden sword and sweep Dream off his feet, towering over him in a shadowing, victorious way. But today was different.

Today, it was Dream whose sword slashed through the air first, not to hurt Wilbur, or even injure him.

Just to delicately slash through the mask covering his face, the sword breaking through the clay of Wilbur’s mask, slicing it clean in half to reveal his face.

Wilbur didn’t look angry, or even disappointed.

He lowered his sword in defeat, and smiled with grace.

“You did it, Clay,” Wilbur said, sheathing his sword. “You did it.”

Dream was about to ask how Wilbur knew his real name when all of a sudden, he took notice of the thick clouds of fog that parted like curtains to reveal the boulder in front of him, cut clean in half, just like Wilbur’s mask.

Dream blinked in disbelief, but he saw his sword’s point situated right in the center of the crack, signifying that this crack in the boulder had been by his doing.

In an instant, Dream turned around to look for Wilbur, or Niki, and thank them, question them for what just happened, but they weren’t there.

Maybe they never had been.

“Thank you,” Dream whispered under his breath, before he laid down on the dirt and looked at the sky, bright with orange and pink and colors of the rising sun.

“Thank you for all you’ve done for me,” Dream whispers, and the four years of exhaustion seemed to hit him all at once as he closed his eyes, sword by his side, and fell asleep.


	4. Chapter 4

**_George_ **

George was going to die.

Not as in the idiom of _embarrassed to death_ or anything similar.

As in, _death_ death.

At first, George was fine with it. Well, maybe _fine_ was a stretch, but he’d accepted that this was where fate had taken him: to die to a vicious, hideous demon that looked suspiciously like Jaba the Hut from _Star Wars_ (not that George would know that, because this story takes place far before the 1980s, or before any television was even close to being invented).

But then George realized something.

His miserable, nineteen-year-old self had been deprived of so many experiences: getting drunk, having a girlfriend (because he was definitely straight), not being a _virgin-_

And as he looked death in the eyes, he thought, _oh shit. I’m going to die a loser._

Wonderful last thoughts, George.

So the first question is: how the hell did George get himself into such a situation?  
The answer was simple: the Final Selection, the deathly exam to get into the Demon Slaying Corps.

George figured he’d have to slay a demon or two and take some type of written test and bam, he’s in the corps.

Of course, life couldn’t be so kind to him.

Turns out, the exam was only passed if you _lived._ That in and of itself was concerning as George had heard over and over how few people actually pass this exam.

(In other words, most people die. Unless you’re some kind of prodigy, which George definitely didn’t consider himself as.)

The actual exam took place on a mountain called Wist Mountain, short for wisteria as the purple flowers bordered the perimeter of the mountain, serving for the perfect place to imprison demons because for some reason, it was too much work to just _kill them._ At the beginning of the exam, all examinees are dropped off at the very top of the mountain, and they have a week to get to the base to the wisteria. The distance is predicted to be about twenty miles, which honestly wouldn’t be that bad if it wasn’t a mountain literally covered in demons. (This was some _Hunger Games_ type shit, but again, not invented yet… you get the gist.)

Here’s the thing about demons: the more they consume, the bigger they become. Or, they become more powerful. In other words, these demons had been feasting on examinees for centuries, so they were _huge_ in size and power.

Everything had started out _fine._ George managed to find a tree to settle in for the night as he knew he would do his resting during the day when the sunlight would take care of many of the demons. He figured the tree served as a nice perch to see all that was below him, but also to hide from any lurking demons out for blood.

He’d busied himself with sharpening his sword and trying to stay awake when about two hours into the night, he heard an ear-piercing scream.

He could’ve stayed in the tree and twiddled his thumbs for a few more hours but unfortunately, George was a good person, so he leapt down from the tree and bounded over to the proximity of where he heard this scream from.

“Help! Please! Someone please help me!”

George peers out from behind a tree as before him, he sees a terrible scene.

He thought he might throw up at the very sight of it: a demon, if you could even call it that, that had to be the size of a small house. Its body shape was lost in thick folds of fat and tissue that was an ugly, pale shade of green (or yellow, this is coming from a colorblind guy). In its large talon-like hand was a person, or what _was_ a person.

The demon held the poor soul from their head, leaving the rest of their body to dangle like a doll. The person was clearly died: face permanently frozen in fear as that must’ve been their last facial expression and blood trickling over it from the scalp. Their head must’ve been crushed to death with this _thing’s_ hand.

But the source of the screaming came from a boy who was on the ground, back pressed to the trunk of a tree, chest heaving with heavy breaths and silent sobs as he shrieked and cried for help.

 _Stay calm, George,_ he has to tell himself, _you can do this._

He has to remind himself that as he unsheathes his sword and leaps into sight.

George jumped in just in the knick of time as he intercepted the demon from reaching the cowering and still-alive boy, blocking this attack with a swift swipe of his sword. In that, he accomplished cutting off its left limb (it kind of looked like a hand, but he wasn’t entirely sure).

The demon gave an unsatisfied cry, but in an instant, its big, blood-shot, red eyes looked over to George who currently guarded the boy from the demon with a blood-stained sword.

“Well well well,” the demon inquires, “looks like we have a _hero_ here, huh?”

George gulps and tries to look fierce as he wipes the gathering sweat on his forehead with his sleeve. The demon gives off a wretched laugh in its gravelly, inhumanly low voice.

“How _interesting._ It’ll make you all the more fun to crush.”

George’s eyes dart to the side quick enough to anticipate the following attack, which was a large, demonic hand reaching to grab him and likely crush him like its last victim, but George knew better; he ducked quickly and drove his sword through the flesh, giving off another shriek from this beast-like demon. Before, the demon had seemed sluggish and slow in its movements, but now, it seemed threatened enough by George to have acquired a deathly precision.

Out of the corner of his eye, George watches as the boy he had literally risked his life to save fled from him and left George for dead. He felt an anger bubble in him as the boy actually held a sword in his shaking hands, yet didn’t use it to help.

But another, sadder part of George was happy that at least one of them could escape.

In this distraction, the demon used it to lunge a limb forward to George once more, only to be met with the same tactic of George to dodge and flick his sword at the thick flesh.

“Oh you little- you’re starting to _really_ piss me off-!”

That was when shit got real.

It seemed the demon was really putting all hands on deck right now as somehow, it could summon multiple limbs from the folds of its folds of fat and skin as five, no- six pairs of hands lunged for George all at once.

Before he let the panic settle in, George closed his eyes for just a second to think of where his training got him in terms of ability.

 _Look for a way out,_ Phil had said to him, warm, kind hands on his shoulders as he’d comforted a young, thirteen-year-old George who was in tears of frustration after being unable to get out of one of Phil’s traps, _there’s always a way out._

As George looked at the closing in hands, he saw his way out. But to get there, he’d have to do a little dirty work first.

Putting his sword to work, George squatted down and sprung himself upward to gain momentum as his sword slashed through one, two, three, four hands, shooting him higher and higher and closer to that gap of space he could spring through and escape-

But he’d miscounted.

There weren’t six hands, there were _seven._

And it was the seventh hand that grabbed him by the ankle and yanked him back with such a force it almost made him drop his sword.

“I have to admit, you’re quite the speedster,” the demon condones, voice low and coaxing as its eyes focused on George, who was dangling upside-down from the grip on his ankle. George struggled, sword slashing and trying to cut at the hand trapping him, but as he did so, the fist tightened around the joint so forcefully it emitted a loud crack that signified the bone had most certainly been broken. George didn’t even hear himself screaming as he was swimming in the prickling hot wave of adrenaline sizzling through his veins, and the blood rushing to his head from being dangled. He didn’t notice he was crying out in pain until he heard the demon laugh, if you could call it that, as it looked down at him with amused, vicious eyes. Its hand got tighter and tighter around his already broken ankle until George swore he could feel himself crying out of sheer _pain,_ but it only made the demon laugh _harder._

“It was fun to play with you,” the demon hisses, “but at the end of the day, humans are so _weak._ So fragile. Look at you, so easy to _break.”_

George could feel the pressure on his ankle all the way up to his head as it pounded hard enough to make his eyes flutter and beg to just _close,_ but he fought to keep them open.

_Look for a way out. There’s always a way out._

This time, there wasn’t. All he could see was the demon’s wide eyes through his own spotting vision, his hands still gripping for his sword tightly even as his energy was deteriorating.

George was going to die.

Until he wasn’t.

George swore he heard a distant _“hey, asshole!”_ but he figured it was his own hallucination as he took his last, hiccuping breaths of fear and closed his eyes. He didn’t want to watch as he faced his own death.

But he realized it wasn’t a hallucination he felt his back hit the ground. Not out of force, but because he had been let go.

At first, George had been afraid to open his eyes and see some kind of bright light to signify that his short life was over, but instead, he saw something else. Or, _someone_ else.

Someone with their sword extended, green (or yellow, but he was fairly certain it was green) cloak billowing behind them like a cape of some fictional super hero. Their form was perfect, sword extended, legs bent to brace.

George tried to focus his vision enough to see who his rescuer was, or at least, what they looked like, but as they victoriously had cut the limb that had been holding George, that seventh hand he hadn’t been able to count, George caught a true glimpse of them as they turned a little to the side to truly size up their opponent.

Under their green cloak was a black jumpsuit synched at the middle with a thick, black belt, sword sheathed strapped on the belt and tall, black boots coming up to nearly his knees. But the most curious thing about his outfit was the clay mask he wore, masking his face aside from the small, prideful grin on his face and the freckles that danced up and down his tanned cheeks.

And the blonde hair, long enough for the top layer to be tucked into a small tail, loose strands falling over his mask to reach his jaw.

_Dream?_

After all these years…

It had been Dream to save him?

George tried to reach for his sword as he knew he should try and help, but he realized his legs were quivering so much that he couldn’t even sit up. Being as stubborn as he was, he would’ve tried anyway, but he heard a voice in his head that didn’t belong to him, coaxing him and saying _you can trust him. Sleep now, George. You can trust him._

Even if he didn’t understand it, George let his eyes slip closed, and he allowed the waves of unconsciousness to wash over him.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I recommend listening to this before/after the chapter!  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vq78sNYsDHY  
> I had it stuck in my head while writing this :)

**_Dream_ **

Maybe if the air didn’t smell like blood and death loomed heavy in the atmosphere, this would be fun.

Okay, maybe _fun_ was a stretch. This demon smelled like actual horse shit.

“You demon slayers are like insects,” the demon hisses, which unfortunately for Dream, resulted in the demon opening its mouth and releasing the worst breath he’s maybe ever smelled in his life.

At first, Dream questioned how someone’s breath could be so awful.

(Then he looked over at the literal mangled, dead body a few meters away. Oh. That’s grim. It also explains a lot.)

“You smell awful,” Dream quips back, sword unsheathing with a satisfying _shing!_ as he swirled his sword by the handle once before gripping it firmly. “You’ve terrorized enough people. It’s time for your tyranny to end.”

“Oh, you foolish boy,” the demon says, blood-red eyes widening enough that Dream realized this monster’s single eye was likely the size of his entire head, “you have no idea.”

Dream felt the very suggestion of the words send a chill down his spine as there seemed to be some kind of underlying meaning behind them, but he gripped his sword tighter in his hands as he heard Techno’s voice in his head saying _don’t give your enemy time to kill you. Don’t be an idiot._

And he really was about to do it. Dream already had it all planned out. He’d use the tree a few feet to the right as his vaulting point, leap from it to gain momentum, swing his sword down and slice the demon’s head clean off. He also figured he could dodge the demon’s attacks by ducking behind it and attacking it from behind.

“You’re one of Technoblade’s kids, aren’t you?”

Dream falters, his eyes pausing from where they had been darting left and right to plan his pursuit. He opened his mouth to answer, but the demon just _laughed,_ a terrible sound.

“It’s the mask. That foolish man gives masks to all of his students! It’s like a _target_ on your back- I wonder how he’ll feel when he realizes another one of his kids isn’t coming home!”

Now _that_ took a second for Dream to process.

He stared right at the demon’s face, and suddenly he was thankful for his own mask to hide his entirely horrified expression, even if this mask was something of a drawn target on his back.

 _Another_ one of his kids?

Was this why Technoblade had been so reluctant to take another pupil? Another chance for someone to be torn from his life?  
As Dream’s brows set and he took his fighting stance to take down this foul-smelling _shit_ of a demon, he tried not to focus on the sick, sick feeling gathering in his stomach as he watched the demon’s thick body tremor with its disgusting laughter.

“I remember the ones from last year! The boy, with his fluffy hair- quite witty, I would’ve spared him but there’s nothing like healthy blood- oh, and the girl with him! Oh, she looked so, so _sad_ when he died that she completely broke down- movements frantic- what a shame. The boy was so cocky but so _strong_ but the girl was just so quick-”

Dream felt like he could throw up as the demon’s voice grew more and more excited at the brutal imageries it painted. Dream could _see_ it in his mind as he realized his other two mentors hadn’t been alive at all. He imagined Wilbur, mask fastened to his face and sword held high and proud only to be crushed, and for Niki, poor Niki to watch and fall apart-

It was too much. It was way too much as Dream’s grip on his sword tightened until his hands shook and he swung at the demon with such lack of control he could hear so many voices in his head begging him to gain control.

“How could you!” Dream screams, sword carelessly slashing left, right, left, the demon dodging each swing with ease as it seemed to be playing with him more than actually avoiding death. “How could you- I’ll fucking kill you!”

“I’d like to see you try, boy,” it hissed back, hand reaching out to grab for him, an attack Dream just _barely_ avoided. He gulps as he realizes if he hadn’t dodged that, he would’ve been crushed to death, and the boy he’d saved moments ago would likely suffer the same fate.

And Dream tried.

He tried to go about the path he had premeditated earlier, leaping from the tree to the demon’s arm to its head, but he had listened far too long and the strategy no longer applied. He’d given his enemy time to kill him. But Dream’s mind was hazed with a red-hot anger that he could feel all the way to his crouched legs and extended arms as he unleashed an anguished battlecry and leapt from the ground, kicking off the tree trunk and taking his aerodynamic stance as Technoblade called it to vault forward and plunge right into the demon’s neck-

But he was too distracted.

A hand gripped firmly around his middle, tight enough he felt something crack a little. Probably a rib, but there was so much raw adrenaline pumping through his veins that all he could do was flinch.

“Just like the girl,” the demon says, snickering, amused as Dream struggled and clawed, but the hand had secured around him with his arms pinned to his sides. He felt his feet lift from the ground, and suddenly, he felt completely powerless. As powerless as he did when he was fourteen and walking home to find his bedroom walls painted in his family’s blood, and to discover that he had lost absolutely everything other than his half-demon little sister.

“No, not yet,” Dream says, hating how weak his voice sounded as he begged for his life. Not to the demon, whose mouth still had clear signs of human blood along the edges, but the universe. “I’m not done yet,” he says in a hoarse whisper.

____________________

_“Will? Do you think Dream can do it?” Niki says, soft voice directed at the boy beside her. She held a crown of flowers in her hands, back pressed to the trunk of a tree that belonged to a thick forest, feet splayed on the grass where the legendary split boulder sat just feet away._

_“I think he’s stronger than either of us,” Wilbur says, looking over to face Niki as he adjusts the flowers in his own hair that Niki had made for him, “but… what about_ that _one?”_

_Niki heaves a sigh as her hands pause from where they weave together the beautiful purple and blue flowers. Her eyes meet Wilbur’s, wide and full of too many harsh memories. “I don’t know,” she whispers in defeat, yet in honesty._

_Wilbur’s eyes fall into his laps, where his hands fiddled. “I hope he’s okay,” he eventually admits with more fondness than he intended._

_“He will be,” Niki says with sudden confidence._

_“He will?” Wilbur answers, eyes meeting hers again._

_Her head falls to his shoulder. “Yeah,” she continues, “because he’s not alone.”_

____________________

It all happened so fast, Dream could hardly make anything of it.

One second, he was staring death in the eyes, hands gripping a sword and bones slowly crushing with the weight of his captor.

The very next second, he was being let go, feet hitting the ground and unbraced legs causing him to tumble backwards.

The demon let out an anguished cry, and Dream tried to look up as quickly as possible and make an educated guess of what that had come from, and how he had managed to make such a massive demon let him go.

But as Dream finally looked up, he realized he hadn’t done anything at all.

Instead stood the very boy he had saved, entire form quivering with effort to hold himself up as the source of pain was his sword, plunged into the demon’s belly. It wasn’t a fatal spot for the demon, but it was a weak point that demon hunters utilized if they couldn’t slay the demon immediately.

“Pick on someone your own size,” the boy says with a strong resolve but a flimsy, exhausted voice, and as Dream scrambled up to his feet to sprint over to his rescuer, he noticed just how nasty the boy’s wound was on his leg: the demon’s claw-like nails had left a collection of deep indents around his shin and calves, ankle bent very unnaturally out of place in what was clearly broken.

But the voice, it was so _familiar._

A voice Dream hadn’t heard in _years._

A little deeper, less crackling and timid than it was four years ago.

Dream turned his head sharply to the side to see that his suspicions were true after all:

_George?_

Dream didn’t realize he’d said that aloud until he watched as George turned to face him, lashes fluttering and weak, weak smile crossing his face.

In that moment, Dream forgot he was in a fucking apocalypse.

George was beautiful.

He wore this black jumpsuit similar to his own, belt synching the waist, gold-trimmed boots meeting his lower thighs and tattered, gold-trimmed cloak dangling from his arms. His hair was a mess, obviously, as he’d been seconds from death not long ago, eyes glazed and unfocused as he fought for consciousness, blood on the side of his face, and his hands, and trickling down his leg.

But goddammit, he was so _pretty._

As if the world had been a pause button that was now resumed once more, a thick, murky-green demonic hand snatched George right around the middle in the position Dream had been in just seconds ago. It seemed that this time around, the demon wasn’t playing anymore as it got right around to grabbing George with such force it made him cry out and cling helplessly to his sword, but the poor guy was so close to passing out that it was futile.

And the sight of George, who had saved him four years ago and had saved him again, in the clutches of some sneering _monster,_ Dream felt a rush of pure anger engulf him, but not the rash, blind rage that had enveloped him earlier.

Some kind of inhuman strength.

Dream pushed off from the ground, lunged forward, and held his sword in front of him, body following the motion in a streamline. His sword slashed through the obstacles of limbs and hands and now-weak attempts for the demon to stop its own death, but alas, it was useless as Dream had gained too much momentum.

As Dream saw his opening, the monster lunging forward for Dream instead of covering its own neck, he used it. Just like when he had seen Wilbur’s mask and slashed it clean off only to realize he’d conquered the boulder, he followed his deep-rooted instincts. And next thing he knew, George was being dropped to the ground, and the demon was letting out a terrible, terrible shrieking sound that was something of a victory song to Dream as it screamed in its own demise.

Once Dream landed on the ground once again, sword dripping with demon blood and chest heaving with heavy, labored breaths, did he let himself smile just a little.

Vengeance was sweet, but victory was sweeter.

 _You can rest now, Niki and Wilbur,_ he thinks to himself, hoping somehow that they could hear him, _you can rest._

A sound of a weak cough from behind him was enough to remind Dream of George’s presence as quickly, he whirled around and padded against the dirt ground of the forest.

He dropped to his knees beside George’s crumpled form, eyes fluttered closed, legs bent as he must’ve fallen when the demon had let him go. But his chest rose and fall with shallow yet steady breaths. He was alive.

“George,” Dream says in an instant, hands reaching forward to help him sit up. “Oh my God, George-”

Slowly but surely, George’s warm, brown eyes flutter open. Relief floods through Dream as George says, voice cracking but still audible, “Dream. You… saved me.”

Dream gives off a weak laugh. “That’s right, princess,” he says a little breathlessly. George’s brows furrow comically.

“I’m not a princess,” he grumbles. “I saved you twice, mind you, so if anyone’s a princess, it’s _you.”_

“Uh huh. Who’s being cradled in my arms right now, hm?”

George gives him a stubborn look, and though he gave Dream’s arm a weak swat of protest, he didn’t move from where he practically sat in Dream’s lap.

Before Dream could talk himself out of it, he leaned forward completely and wrapped his arms tight around George’s form with more desperation that he had liked, but in the end, that was four years of waiting for George to come back to him.

Though he could feel George’s momentary hesitation before he felt a pair of arms wrap back around him, they were tightly hugging now, both sweaty and tired and covered in enough blood to be gross, but neither of them really cared.

“I missed you,” George eventually admits, breath against Dream’s neck. Dream tugged him a little closer.

“I missed you too,” he says back.

George was warm, though his hands felt cold and shaky, and even under the grime and injury, he smelled like… something nice. Like nature, but not the dirty, foul side of it. The true wonders of nature, like the smell of fresh pine trees and flowers when their petals fluttered in the breeze. George smelled- and felt- like home.

Even if George was a stranger, basically, he felt like so much more. Like someone who would _not_ be a stranger in a matter of time, and someone who would _be_ Dream’s home.

But for now, they were in the middle of a forest in the late of night where distant screams and demonic shrieks could be heard if Dream listened hard enough. With great reluctance, Dream pulled back from George’s embrace, and immediately he missed the warmth and scent of it was his arms felt very, very empty.

As he looked into George’s eyes, he realized how little he had changed from those years ago. Even if he was older and more _handsome_ looking, he still had the kindness in his eyes he had when Dream had woken up from horrible nightmares.

“Wow, look,” George drawls, voice slurred from begging to drift to sleep as he points to something behind Dream.

Sure enough, there was the demon, dead, thankfully, but disintegrating; from where its head had been slashed clean off thanks to Dream’s swordsmanship (along with many limbs but that’s a little gory to go into too much detail to explain), the demon seemed to slowly cease to exist as its body melted into red ashes that scattered, forgotten, in the wind. It would be beautiful if the circumstances were different.

“That fucker,” Dream spits as he turns back to George, poor George whose leg was injured and bleeding out, and if his shaking legs and hands were anything to go off of, he was clearly in a lot of pain. “Hold on tight.”

His suspicions were proven as George didn’t even protest as Dream picked him up with him and loaded him onto his back, feeling George’s arms loop around his neck as Dream cupped his hands under his thighs to keep him supported. His heart did a little spin in his chest as he felt George’s chin rest on top of his hair.

“Still wear that mask, huh?” George drawls as Dream advances closer to the disintegrating demon, where he swore he could hear its pathetic, whiny voice.

Dream nearly shutters as he thinks of the demon’s vivid descriptions of how it killed his fellow masked comrades, but then Dream thinks to Technoblade, the icon of fearlessness and strength who bore his own carved mask.

“Proudly,” Dream answers as he pauses to stare down at the single remaining arm of the demon, extended out, as if begging to be held, begging to be forgiven by the cruel universe. The light of the moon shined on the demon’s green, ugly palm as the overhead tree branches swayed apart enough to show the night sky.

Dream was about to spit on the hand or do something equally demoralizing when George’s voice came from behind him and said, “what a sad spirit.” He didn’t say _stupid fucker_ or _nice try bitch._

“What?” Dream questions in minor disbelief.

“What a sad spirit,” George says, “can’t you hear it? He’s… gone through so much pain. He was about our age when he was turned. That must’ve been centuries ago.” All Dream heard was the sad wails and whines of the dying creature, but it seemed that George heard much more as he watched George’s pale, quivering hand reach and place itself in the demon’s without hesitation. And the demon’s hand turned paler and smaller until it looked to be a human hand, squeezing George’s hand back before the ashes enveloped it and in an instant, it was gone.

Even as the trudged away from the crime scene and looked around for somewhere to settle, Dream was still in awe as he carried a now-sleeping George down the mountain.

George… he really was different, wasn’t he?

 _“I can hear them sometimes,”_ was all George had said after that, _“sometimes… I can see the lives they lived before.”_

To some, that would be torture.

But to George, this was an opportunity.

George was special, and call Dream a crazy man, but he would die for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> now that Dream and George are finally reunited, may the adventure begin!


End file.
